The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) on March 15 withdrew a contentious ‘advisory’ that required Artificial Intelligence (AI) firms to obtain government permission to make their products available to users online in India. A revised advisory withdrawing the original March 1 missive, in “supersession” of the latter, also withdrew the requirement of an action taken report from tech firms that was due on Friday. The advisory had drawn sharp criticism from tech firms.
Apar Gupta, who wrote in an article for The Hindu on March 15 that the earlier advisory “demand[ed] vague censorship without citing any legal authority”, said that its replacement remained problematically on the same lines, minus the requirement to get government approval on AI models online. “There is no legal power for MEITY to issue advisories,” Mr. Gupta said. “There is a continued use of an illegal administrative practice” by the Ministry, he added.
Both advisories warn AI firms against “bias or discrimination or threaten the integrity of the electoral process”. With the advisory’s withdrawal, “momentary accountability has emerged due to the interests of diverse private sector interests” from large tech firms to Indian ones, Mr. Gupta said.
